SPRING BREAKOUT: “When we first formed, we only meant to be together for that semester,” says Mathieu Santos. “A way for the seniors in the band to have something fun to do.”

When you listen to Mathieu Santos, you might imagine that Ra Ra Riot have enjoyed a charmed rise to indie fame, everything coming a little too easy for the erstwhile college students. As he talks about his band in thoughtful, measured tones, the former art major sounds more like a young academic than the bassist of one of the year's breakout indie groups, one that has — at its young age — already dealt with the death of a member. It's been a slow and steady ascent to buzzland since Ra Ra Riot got their unassuming start playing to drunk kids in the basements of Syracuse University house parties in January 2006.

"When we first formed, we only meant to be together for that semester," says Santos, "[as] a way for the seniors in the band to have something fun to do." Having snagged their first gig before their first practice, Ra Ra Riot quickly booked a full tour for the summer, and Santos (not yet a senior) found himself postponing his education indefinitely. "It's kind of funny. I guess when we first started, we didn't have any expectations of what the band could or would become. Every step has been part experiment and part surprise."

Ra Ra Riot, who play the WFNX Miracle on Tremont Street party next Thursday with Broken Bells and Neon Trees, took a break from touring this summer to pen sophomore album The Orchard (Barsuk), finding respite in a vast peach orchard in Penn Yann, New York. "We needed a place to go," Santos explains, "because we couldn't do it in the city. It's hard to function or be creative because it's such an over-stimulating environment."

They found that place in a Mennonite community, in a rambling farmhouse where guitarist Milo Bonacci was housesitting when he conceived the band. "It sort of felt like this weird full-circle thing," says Santos. After six weeks of writing and peach eating ("It was like heaven being there, like, infinite peaches"), they went home to Brooklyn, where Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla mixed all but one of the album's 10 tracks. They met Walla while touring with Death Cab last summer. "He kept saying how he wanted to be a part of it [the album] in whatever capacity, whether it was production or just friendly advice or whatever." So Walla mixed the album, "polishing everything up."

The Orchard shows Ra Ra Riot stretching their muscles. Although they maintain their chamber-pop sound, distinct '80s influences are evident on many of the tracks, something Santos attributes to a generational soft spot. "We grew up with a lot of that stuff, and it's deeply embedded in our minds."

The accidental drowning of drummer John Pike in Buzzards Bay in 2007 also has a daily impact on their music, says Santos, who wrote "Massachusetts" about the ordeal. The lyrics — "To a mother so cold and gray/And though she gives you one, she takes one away" — reveal a wound not yet healed. "John was just such an incredible musician, and such a huge part of the band, in every way. We still try to have his ideas come through in the music we make."

Review: WFNX's Miracle on Tremont Street 2009 A quick, mildly sycophantic shout-out to the "powers that be" here in Phoenix -Land: This year's Miracle on Tremont Street was nothing short of a wicked pissah powerhouse bill. The grand old Orpheum creaked under the weight of a sold-out audience, and a pronounced feistiness prevailed .

Sonny, Pat, and all the cats The primo jazz event of the spring will be SONNY ROLLINS 's concert at Symphony Hall on April 18 (bso.org). The great master saxophonist and peerless improviser often hits town in April, and this time it's to kick off his 80th-birthday tour. Whew.

Pat Metheny | Orchestrion The “orchestrion” is a Rube Goldberg-like contraption that empowers Metheny in one-man-band format to trigger a variety of percussion and other instruments as he plays guitar.

Higher yearning: Best Coast The day after a Best Coast gig in Minneapolis last week, a reviewer for the City Pages alt-weekly bemoaned the fact that the Los Angeles trio took a whole two hours — two hours! — to hit the stage after doors opened.

The Walkmen refuse to break stride "My lord, where's the satisfaction? It's all uphill for me," croons Hamilton Leithauser in "Victory," a standout track from the Walkmen's new Lisbon (Fat Possum), and a perfect example of the sort of musty and swelling anthems the New York band — who come to Royale next Thursday — have mastered over the past decade.

Night Fruit add grit to a dream-pop landscape My fascination with dream pop — a genre characterized by washy guitars and airy, indistinct vocals — lies in its effects when done right: a sense of vague translocation and a fleeting feeling of transcendence.

Women | Public Strain For their sophomore effort, Women returned to the same Calgary studio that had birthed their 2008 debut, the basement of fellow musician/neighbor Chad Van Gaalen.

THE TNT SHORT LIST: ARTSEMERSON'S NEXT THING | February 12, 2013 Mike Daisey's anthropologic commentary on American culture is just the beginning of what ArtsEmerson has in store for festival-goers at The Next Thing (TNT) Festival.